The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020 (The Best Writing on Mathematics, 13)

261 Pages·2020·18.289 MB·English

by  Mircea Pitici (editor)

The BEST
WRITING on
MATHEMATICS
2020

The BEST
WRITING on
MATHEMATICS
2020
Mircea Pitici, Editor

princeton university press
princeton and oxford
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Contents
Color illustration insert follows page 128
Introduction
Mircea Pitici ix
Outsmarting a Virus with Math
Steven Strogatz 1
Uncertainty
Peter J. Denning and Ted G. Lewis 8
The Inescapable Casino
Bruce M. Boghosian 15
Resolving the Fuel Economy Singularity
Stan Wagon 29
The Median Voter Theorem: Why Politicians Move to the Center
Jørgen Veisdal 39
The Math That Takes Newton into the Quantum World
John Baez 45
Decades- Old Computer Science Conjecture Solved in Two Pages
Erica Klarreich 54
The Three- Body Problem
Richard Montgomery 61
The Intrigues and Delights of Kleinian and Quasi- Fuchsian
Limit Sets
Chris King 78
Mathematical Treasures from Sid Sackson
Jim Henle 92
The Amazing Math Inside the Rubik’s Cube
Dave Linkletter 108
viii Contents
What Is a Hyperbolic 3- Manifold?
Colin Adams 115
Higher Dimensional Geometries: What Are They Good For?
Boris Odehnal 122
Who Mourns the Tenth Heegner Number?
James Propp 137
On Your Mark, Get Set, Multiply
Patrick Honner 145
1994, The Year Calculus Was Born
Ben Orlin 153
Gauss’s Computation of the Easter Date
Donald Teets 160
Mathematical Knowledge and Reality
Paul Thagard 172
The Ins and Outs of Mathematical Explanation
Mark Colyvan 189
Statistical Intervals, Not Statistical Significance
Gerald J. Hahn, Necip Doganaksoy,
and William Q. Meeker 198
Contributors 205
Notable Writings 213
Acknowledgments 225
Credits 227
Introduction
Mircea Pitici
This anthology is the 11th in the annual series of The Best Writing on Mathe-
matics. It contains pieces originally published in late 2018 and throughout
2019 in various venues, including specialized print and online maga-
zines, research journals, newspapers, books, and collections of confer-
ence proceedings. The volume should be considered by the readers in
conjunction with the other ten previously published in the series.
Overview of the Volume
In a piece eerily reminding us of the current coronavirus health crisis,
Steven Strogatz recounts the little- known contribution of differential
equations to virology during the HIV crisis and makes the case for con-
sidering calculus among the heroes of modern life.
Peter Denning and Ted Lewis examine the genealogy, the progress,
and the limitations of complexity theory—a set of principles developed
by mathematicians and physicists who attempt to tame the uncertainty
of social and natural processes.
In yet another example of fusion between ideas from mathematics
and physics, Bruce Boghosian describes how a series of simulations
carried out to model the long- term outcome of economic interactions
based on free- market exchanges inexorably leads to extreme inequality
and to the oligarchical concentration of wealth.
Stan Wagon points out the harmonic- average intricacies, the practi-
cal paradoxes, and the policy implications that result from using the
miles- per- gallon measure for the fuel economy of hybrid cars.
Jørgen Veisdal details some of the comparative reasoning supposed
to take place in majoritarian democracies—resulting in electoral strat-
egies that lead candidates toward the center of the political spectrum.